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The Outer Worlds What Containers Work Before You Fix The Ship Engine?

The British men in the business of colonizing the North American continent were so sure they "owned whatever state they land on" (yeah, that'due south from Pocahontas), they established new colonies by simply drawing lines on a map.

Then, everyone living in the at present-claimed territory, became a part of an English colony.

Map of British territory in North America
A map of the British dominions in North America, c1793.

And of all the lines drawn on maps in the 18th century, perhaps the most famous is the Mason-Dixon Line.

What is the Stonemason-Dixon Line?

Stargazer's stone
The "Stargazer's Rock." Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon used this equally a base point while plotting the Mason and Dixon line. The name comes from the astronomical observations they fabricated at that place.

The Mason-Dixon Line also called the Mason and Dixon Line is a boundary line that makes upwardly the border betwixt Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Over time, the line was extended to the Ohio River to make up the entire southern edge of Pennsylvania.

But it besides took on additional significance when it became the unofficial border between the Northward and the Due south, and perhaps more importantly, between states where slavery was allowed and states where slavery had been abolished.

READ MORE: The History of Slavery: America'due south Black Mark

Where is the Stonemason-Dixon Line?

For the cartographers in the room, the Mason and Dixon Line is an e-west line located at 39ยบ43'20" N starting due south of Philadelphia and east of the Delaware River. Mason and Dixon resurveyed the Delaware tangent line and the Newcastle arc and in 1765 began running the east-due west line from the tangent point, at approximately 39°43′ Northward.

For the rest of us, it's the border between Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Pennsylvania–Maryland edge was defined equally the line of breadth 15 miles (24 km) south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia.

Mason-Dixon Line Map

Have a look at the map below to see exactly where the Mason Dixon Line is:

Mason-Dixon Line

Why Is information technology Called the Mason-Dixon Line?

It is called the Mason and Dixon Line because the two men who originally surveyed the line and got the governments of Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland to agree, were named Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.

Jeremiah was a Quaker and from a mining family. He showed a talent early on for maths and then surveying. He went downwards to London to be taken on by the Royal Order, only at a fourth dimension when his social life was getting a bit out of hand.

He was a chip of a lad by all accounts, not your typical Quaker, and never married. He enjoyed socialising and carousing and was really expelled from the Quakers for his drinking and keeping loose company.

Mason's early life was more sedate by comparison. At the age of 28 he was taken on by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich as an assistant. Noted as a "meticulous observer of nature and geography" he afterward became a fellow of the Royal Guild.

Mason and Dixon arrived in Philadelphia on 15 November 1763. Although the war in America had ended some 2 years earlier, there remained considerable tension between the settlers and their native neighbours.

A Plan of the West Line
"A Plan of the West-Line or Parallel of Breadth" by Charles Mason, 1768.

The line was not chosen the Mason-Dixon Line when information technology was kickoff fatigued. Instead, it got this name during the Missouri Compromise, which was agreed to in 1820.

It was used to reference the boundary between states where slavery was legal and states where it was not. After this, both the name and its understood meaning became more widespread, and it eventually became role of the border between the seceded Confederate States of America and Matrimony Territories.

Why Practice We Have a Mason-Dixon Line?

In the early days of British colonialism in North America, land was granted to individuals or corporations via charters, which were given past the rex himself.

Yet, even kings can make mistakes, and when Charles II granted William Penn a charter for country in America, he gave him territory that he had already granted to both Maryland and Delaware! What an idiot!?

William Penn  was a writer, early member of the Religious Order of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the English North American colony the Province of Pennsylvania. He was an early advocate of commonwealth and religious liberty, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans.

Under his direction, the urban center of Philadelphia was planned and developed. Philadelphia was planned out to be grid-like with its streets and be very easy to navigate, unlike London where Penn was from. The streets are named with numbers and tree names. He chose to use the names of copse for the cross streets because Pennsylvania means "Penn'southward Forest".

Charles II of England
King Charles II of England.

Simply in his defence force, the map he was using was inaccurate, and this threw everything out of whack. At first, it wasn't a huge result since the population in the area was and then thin in that location were non many disputes related to the edge.

But as all the colonies grew in population and sought to expand due west, the matter of the unresolved border became a much more prominent in mid-Atlantic politics.

The Feud

In colonial times, as in modern times, as well, borders and boundaries were critical. Provincial governors needed them to ensure they were collecting their due taxes, and citizens needed to know which country they had a right to claim and which belonged to someone else (of grade, they didn't seem to listen too much when that 'someone else' was a tribe of Native Americans).

The dispute had its origins almost a century earlier in the somewhat confusing proprietary grants by Male monarch Charles I to Lord Baltimore (Maryland) and by King Charles Ii to William Penn (Pennsylvania and Delaware). Lord Baltimore was an English nobleman who was the first Proprietor of the Province of Maryland, ninth Proprietary Governor of the Colony of Newfoundland and second of the colony of Province of Avalon to its southeast. His title was "Commencement Lord Proprietary, Earl Palatine of the Provinces of Maryland and Avalon in America".

A problem arose when Charles II granted a charter for Pennsylvania in 1681. The grant defined Pennsylvania's southern edge every bit identical to Maryland's northern border, merely described it differently, as Charles relied on an inaccurate map. The terms of the grant clearly indicate that Charles II and William Penn believed the 40th parallel would intersect the Twelve-Mile Circle effectually New Castle, Delaware, when in fact it falls north of the original boundaries of the City of Philadelphia, the site of which Penn had already selected for his colony's upper-case letter city. Negotiations ensued after the problem was discovered in 1681.

As a result, solving this edge dispute became a major issue, and it became an even bigger deal when tearing conflict broke out in the mid-1730s over land claimed past both people from Pennsylvania and Maryland. This little event became known every bit Cresap's State of war.

Cresaps War
Map showing the area disputed betwixt Maryland and Pennsylvania during Cresap's War.

To stop this madness, the Penns, who controlled Pennsylvania, and the Calverts, who were in charge of Maryland, hired Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to survey the territory and describe a boundary line to which everyone could concord.

Merely Charles Bricklayer and Jeremiah Dixon merely did this considering the Maryland governor had agreed to a border with Delaware. He afterward argued the terms he signed to were non the ones he had agreed to in person, simply the courts made him stick to what was on newspaper. E'er read the fine print!

This agreement made it easier to settle the dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland considering they could apply the at present established boundary between Maryland and Delaware as a reference. All they had to practice was extend a line west from the southern boundary of Philadelphia, and…

The Stonemason-Dixon Line was born.

Limestone markers measuring up to 5ft (i.5m) high – quarried and transported from England – were placed at every mile and marked with a P for Pennsylvania and K for Maryland on each side. And so-chosen Crown stones were positioned every five miles and engraved with the Penn family'due south coat of artillery on one side and the Calvert family unit'southward on the other.

Later, in 1779, Pennsylvania and Virginia agreed to extend the Mason-Dixon Line west by five degrees of longitude to create the border between the two colines-turned-states (By 1779, the American Revolution was underway and the colonies were no longer colonies).

In 1784, surveyors David Rittenhouse and Andrew Ellicott and their crew completed the survey of the Stonemason–Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, five degrees from the Delaware River.

Rittenhouse's coiffure completed the survey of the Stonemason–Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, v degrees from the Delaware River. Other surveyors connected west to the Ohio River. The department of the line betwixt the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and the river is the county line between Marshall and Wetzel counties, West Virginia.

In 1863, during the American Civil War, Westward Virginia separated from Virginia and rejoined the Wedlock, but the line remained as the edge with Pennsylvania.

It's updated several times throughout history, the most recent being during the Kennedy Administration, in 1963.

The Bricklayer-Dixon Line's Identify in History

The Stonemason–Dixon line along the southern Pennsylvania border later became informally known as the boundary between the free (Northern) states and the slave (Southern) states.

It is unlikely that Mason and Dixon ever heard the phrase "Mason–Dixon line". The official written report on the survey, issued in 1768, did not even mention their names. While the term was used occasionally in the decades following the survey, information technology came into popular use when the Missouri Compromise of 1820 named "Stonemason and Dixon's line" as role of the boundary between slave territory and free territory.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was United States federal legislation that stopped northern attempts to forever prohibit slavery'due south expansion by albeit Missouri as a slave state in exchange for legislation which prohibited slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel except for Missouri. The 16th United States Congress passed the legislation on March 3, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820.

At start glance, the Mason and Dixon Line doesn't seem similar much more than a line on a map. Plus, it was created out of a disharmonize brought on by poor mapping in the offset identify…a problem more than lines aren't likely to solve.

But despite its lowly status as a line on a map, information technology eventually gained prominence in United states of america history and collective memory considering of what it came to mean to some segments of the American population.

It first took on this meaning in 1780 when Pennsylvania abolished slavery. Over time, more northern states would practise the same until all the states n of the line did not allow slavery. This made it the edge betwixt slave states and free states.

Mayhap the biggest reason this is significant has to do with the undercover resistance to slavery that took place well-nigh from the institution'southward inception. Slaves who managed to escape from their plantations would endeavour to brand their way north, past the Bricklayer-Dixon Line.

Underground Railroad map
Map of the Underground Railroad. The Mason-Dixon line drew a literal barrier between slave and free states.

Notwithstanding, in the early years of U.s.a. history, when slavery was withal legal in some Northern states and avoiding slave laws required anyone who found a slave to render him or her to their owner, meaning Canada was often the final destination. Yet it was no cloak-and-dagger the journey got slightly easier after crossing the Line and making information technology into Pennsylvania.

Because of this, the Mason-Dixon Line became a symbol in the quest for liberty. Making information technology across significantly improved your chances of making it to freedom.

Today, the Mason-Dixon Line does not accept the same significance (plainly, since slavery is no longer legal) although information technology still serves equally a useful demarcation in terms of American politics.

The "Due south" is still considered to start below the line, and political views and cultures tend to change dramatically one time past the line and into Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, N Carolina, and so on.

Across this, the line still serves as the border, and someday two groups of people can agree on a border for a long fourth dimension, everyone wins. There'southward less fighting and more peace.

The Line and Social Attitudes

Considering when studying the U.s.a. history the almost racist stuff always comes from the South, it's easy to autumn into the trap of thinking the North was every bit progressive as the South was racist.

But this simply isn't truthful. Instead, people in the North were merely as racist, but they went nigh it in different ways. They were more subtle. Sneakier. And they were quick to guess Southern racist, pushing attention away from them.

In fact, segregation notwithstanding existed in many northern cities, especially when it came to housing, and attitudes towards blacks were far from warm and welcoming. Boston, a city very much in the North, has had a long history of racism, notwithstanding Massachusetts was ane of the get-go states to abolish slavery.

Equally a result, to say the Mason-Dixon Line separated the country by social attitude is a gross mischaracterization.

Mason-Dixon Crownstone Sign
Stonemason-Dixon Crownstone sign in Marydel, Maryland.

formulanone from Huntsville, Us [CC By-SA 2.0

It's true that blacks were generally safer in the N than in the Southward, where lynchings and other mob violence were quite common all the way up until the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

But the Mason-Dixon Line is best understood as the unofficial edge between the North and the South as well as the divider betwixt gratuitous and slave states.

The Futurity of the Mason-Dixon Line

Although information technology even so serves as the border of three states, the Mason-Dixon Line is nigh likely waning in significance. Its unofficial office as a border between the Due north and South only really remains because of the political differences between united states on each side.

Even so, the political dynamic in the country is changing rapidly, especially as demographics shift. What this volition do to the deviation between Due north and S, who knows?

Mason Dixon Line Trail
The "Mason Dixon Line Trail" stretches from Pennsylvania to Delaware, and is a popular attraction to tourists.

Jbrown620 at English language Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0

If we employ history equally a guide, information technology's safe to say the line volition continue to serve some significance if in nix else except our collective consciousness. But maps are redrawn constantly. What'southward a timeless border today can be a forgotten boundary tomorrow. History is still existence written.

READ MORE:

The Corking Compromise of 1787

The Three-Fifths Compromise

The Outer Worlds What Containers Work Before You Fix The Ship Engine?,

Source: https://historycooperative.org/mason-dixon-line/

Posted by: gonzalezabte1968.blogspot.com

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